The "What's on your mind?" Thread -2017

[LTS3]

I have all the recent emails saved. I'll print them out, write my comments on the side, and put them in a safe place.

I opted not to go to Mom's house today. I can't deal with family drama on top of work drama I had a leisurely day doing not much of anything. I went to the supermarket after lunch for groceries. I decided on a store rotisserie chicken for dinner. I bought a few other things as well. Leroy went bonkers looking for the chicken when I got home. I stuck it in the oven where he couldn't get to it.

After dinner I headed to the gym next door to do some PT excercises without two cats walking over me and rack up more steps on the treadmill for the walk challenge. My arms are sore from the resistance band. My back isn't too bad but we'll see if I can get out of bed to go to work tomorrow.

 

[Willowy]

Don't be too hard on her. #1, you got a thank you note. #2, it was hand-written, not a copy-paste of what she sent to everyone else. #3, there is a type of memory called word recall, it's the brain providing you the right word to use, and sometimes the brain glitches and provides a similarly sounding/looking word. If she didn't re-read the letter carefully, she wouldn't have caught it as word recall glitches are never caught by the person experiencing them at the time it happens (after all, your brain is saying you did use the right word).

I don't intend to be HARD on her, the main thing is that I always thought that was a typing error so it was weird to see it in handwriting! Yeah, she's a great kid.

The schools here don't seem to prioritize English. . .my nephew's first-grade teacher once sent a short note home to parents with SEVEN spelling/grammar/punctuation errors. My SIL "graded" it with a red pen and stuck it on the fridge .

 

[arouetta]

The latest Nature Box included a $30 gift card to some online site called Hello Fresh. Hey, $30 is $30, so I checked it out. Whoah!!!! The prices are crazy high!

I can see the pricing fits the product as they mail every ingredient to you so fast that the meat doesn't go bad and the packaging is basically a cooler. So super-fast shipping costs plus lots of packaging justifies the cost. But those are yuppie prices aimed at someone like a lawyer married to a doctor and neither has time to cook.

 

[Margret]

Don't be too hard on her. #1, you got a thank you note. #2, it was hand-written, not a copy-paste of what she sent to everyone else. #3, there is a type of memory called word recall, it's the brain providing you the right word to use, and sometimes the brain glitches and provides a similarly sounding/looking word. If she didn't re-read the letter carefully, she wouldn't have caught it as word recall glitches are never caught by the person experiencing them at the time it happens (after all, your brain is saying you did use the right word).

This is true, but it kind of depends on the school.

I have a friend who teaches a college level basic electronics course, to students on-track to become Electrical Engineers, at one of the premier colleges in the country for EEs. One day my friend gave a puzzle to his students. (For the math-inclined who want to solve the puzzle themselves, don't click on the spoilers.)

This is a math puzzle. Take (A-X)*(B-X)*(C-X)*(D-X)*...*(Y-X)*(Z-X)=???
* means times.
Parentheses mean you do those operations (the subtractions) before you do the other operations, i.e. multiplication.
... means follow the same pattern, working your way through the entire alphabet.
You have all the information needed to come up with the correct numerical answer, regardless of what values are assigned to A through Z.

Not one of the students (all enrolled in a track that's supposed to eventually turn them into Electrical Engineers, and all of whom managed to qualify to become students at this college) was able to solve the problem. In all fairness, I'm good at math but I still needed one hint. Here it is:

Spoiler: First hint:

How many terms are in this equation? (Each subtraction counts as a term.)

Not one of the students could answer the question, so he gave them a much broader hint:

Spoiler: Second hint:

Well, how many letters are in the alphabet?

Not one of the students could answer the question immediately. Some (not all) got it by counting on their fingers, which truly does say something appalling about the state of education in this country.

For those of you who are still working on the problem and getting nowhere, here is the third hint:

Spoiler: Third hint:

Start at Z and work backwards.

And if you've spent as much time on the puzzle as you like and just want to know the solution, here it is:

Spoiler: The solution:

Okay, Z-X=something or other; we don't have enough information to say what. The same applies to Y-X. But then we get to X-X, and we know what X-X is. X-X=0, and zero times anything equals zero. So the answer to the puzzle is Zero.

Margret

 

[arouetta]

I don't intend to be HARD on her, the main thing is that I always thought that was a typing error so it was weird to see it in handwriting! Yeah, she's a great kid.

The schools here don't seem to prioritize English. . .my nephew's first-grade teacher once sent a short note home to parents with SEVEN spelling/grammar/punctuation errors. My SIL "graded" it with a red pen and stuck it on the fridge .

Stuck it on the fridge? I'd have personally taken it back (since written words can be taken wrong) and made a joke about being a smart a**.

Yeah, it could have been bad teaching, but honor students usually push themselves beyond the available teachers. I actually have a word recall problem (which is why I know so much about it) and I'm forever getting weird looks at work when I say the wrong word, get corrected, and I respond with "But that's what I said....or rather what I meant." My family is so used to me that they either ignore the wrong word because they know what I meant, or substitute the right word matter-of-factually. The only time I'm aware of it is when the word recall glitches so bad that I end up doing a guessing game "It's starts with __ and _____ is a similar word" or when I'm corrected.

 

[arouetta]

I have a friend who teaches a college level basic electronics course, to students on-track to become Electrical Engineers, at one of the premier colleges in the country for EEs. One day my friend gave a puzzle to his students. (For the math-inclined who want to solve the puzzle themselves, don't click on the spoilers.)

This is a math puzzle. Take (A-X)*(B-X)*(C-X)*(D-X)*...*(Y-X)*(Z-X)=???
* means times.
Parentheses mean you do those operations (the subtractions) before you do the other operations, i.e. multiplication.
... means follow the same pattern, working your way through the entire alphabet.
You have all the information needed to come up with the correct numerical answer, regardless of what values are assigned to A through Z.
Margret

This is going to sound crazy, but I solved it in seconds, intuitively, without calculating. With any "any number" equation....

Spoiler: .....

the answer is virtually always one or zero, and with that many multipliers it had to be zero.

Hope I did the spoiler right!

 

[NewYork1303]

I sent a graduation present to a young friend. She wrote a very nice thank you note in which she assured me that she "defiantly" appreciated the gift. It was a handwritten note. . .I didn't even know that was an actual misspelling; I always thought it was from typing too fast, a typo of a different misspelling ("definately"). She was an Honor Student . I know the schools here aren't too great but yikes.

I have a four year degree in english. This is one of my most common mistakes, written or typed. It is a dyslexia thing for me. I missplace letters and so learned to spell definitely as defiantly accidentally. To this day, I have to force myself to look for this mistake whenever I write.

 

[Margret]

arouetta ,

1. Yes, you did the spoiler right. The way to check is to click on "More Options..." and then click on "Preview."
2. Your observation is accurate.
3. It doesn't sound crazy. Some people have more of an intuition for numbers than others. What gets me are the people who get this one immediately, with no hints at all, and with the next breath tell me that they're terrible at math! It's almost like singing, where people are socialized to apologize for their voices even if they have truly excellent singing voices.

Margret

 

[Margret]

Rest in peace, Stephen Furst. Stephen Furst (1955 - 2017) Dead at the age of 63 from complications of Type 2 diabetes. Since this happened a week ago, obviously I was late getting the news.

Stephen Furst was brilliant playing Vir Cotto, the hapless assistant to Centauri Ambassador Londo Mollari in Babylon 5. He began as a fairly minor character, but that character always tried to be kind and ethical, no matter what Londo demanded of him, and by the end of the series Vir Cotto was the Centauri emperor. (In case it isn't obvious, I was a big fan of Babylon 5.) From all reports I've been able to find online, Stephen Furst, the man, was as kind as Vir Cotto, the character.

Margret

 

[foxxycat]

Well I loved that math equation! I kept looking to see what the numbers are to plug into for A, B etc...and didn't catch the X-X=0 until I read the spoiler-but I was saying to myself-how do we know what the answer is without a number?! Good question! I do remember how many letters in the alphabet but I had to think a bit--I wasn't sure if it was 24 or 26-I knew it was an even number and in the middle of 20s just not which one.

Well the parts for the dryer actually showed up but there's one part missing that they didnt' have available to buy-it's a fuse and I bought that on Walmarts site=there's one more which is a thermistor-I have to buy that from another site-I wrote down the part number and left it home...but the fuse should be ready for me to pick up tomorrow. We did a very small load of wash-I hung my stuff in the sunshine and he still went to the matt.

I hit paydirt with books this weekend..there's a tiny town library next town over and they had a stuff a bag sale so bought a ton of books to resell and new ones to read. I found Alice Sebold Lucky and The Lovely Bones. I started Lucky last night-very good! I also got 3 new Danielle steel books but they are hard cover but for the stuff a bag sale I will put up with it..plus I just love her newer books-she throws in a bit of suspense with character relationships-and a twist..my favorite from her is Honey Thy Self- just a really good story.

Well I have to price my books this week and get them in the shop-my summer customers will be happy to see some new titles..and update my facebook page Foxxy's Book Closet and let them know that they will have 40% off prices. I also got a six pack of flowers and they gave away free veg plants because they were over watered-but the ones I got were still salvageable. I have to dig up some weeds to make room for them. Some cherry tomatoes and an acorn squash plant and lobelia and some other pretty flower. Still have some tidal wave petunias to get in the ground-I got to stop being so lazy and get going! Half summer is already gone it seems!

 

[LTS3]

Back is a little sore but not too bad. Good thing I have help today at work Technically we're done but my helper wants to do more work so I have to stick around for a bit longer just in case. The work can wait for later in the week The database was acting up earlier. If it's working in a bit, I'll get some work done while my helper finishes up what she wants to do.

In the world of work emails, more since the last time I checked on Friday. Enough said

 

[Margret]

Anyone who enjoys math will get a kick out of this story that I heard on NPR two or three weeks ago. The first twenty minutes are about how young children think of and learn about numbers and the second twenty minutes are about an incredible mathematician named Paul Erdös, who had a huge talent for enabling other mathematicians to do their best work. The third twenty minutes are more about human relations than math. New York Public Radio Popup Player

Margret

 

[Mamanyt1953]

Mamanyt1953 You are a born Poet Laureate!!

LOL...thanks, but as I said, it is just how my mind works when I don't go into conversation mode.

I sent a graduation present to a young friend. She wrote a very nice thank you note in which she assured me that she "defiantly" appreciated the gift. It was a handwritten note. . .I didn't even know that was an actual misspelling; I always thought it was from typing too fast, a typo of a different misspelling ("definately"). She was an Honor Student . I know the schools here aren't too great but yikes.

That's a bit scary, if for no other reason than the lack of proof-reading. I've made errors like that, but caught them before they went out. ~giggles quietly~ on the other hand...what on earth could you have sent her that required "defiant" appreciation? The mind boggles.

Margret I didn't even attempt the equation. As we have discussed before, I have issues with arithmetic, much less mathematics. That isn't how my brain is wired. Now, I'm VERY good at some things to do with numbers, I see patterns very clearly, and I know how to look for numbers that are transposed and which numbers are likely to be written instead of OTHER numbers (5 for 8, 3 for either, 4 for 7) and how to know which it was, AND I know phi from pi (although fo and fum confuse me), but...once you throw that " * " in there, and the " ( ) ", I panic and my brain shuts down.

 

[segelkatt]

arouetta - try chocolate with a high cocoa content, it satisfies cravings much faster, since it is harder it will take longer to melt in your mouth also. I've been losing weight also, after 4 pm I don't usually eat anything at all although I do nurse a big glass of fruit punch spiked with rum during the evening. Half of the time I replace the punch with Sprite Zero and lots of ice. Since January I have lost 17 lbs and I can really tell. Waiting to get under 200, 4 more lbs to go, yeah!.

 

[segelkatt]

LTS3 - save your suggestions and take them with you to the next review just in case. Then if they say you make no suggestions you can pull them out and ask "what about these?" Be sure to have a date on them. Maybe that will open their eyes.

 

[segelkatt]

I don't intend to be HARD on her, the main thing is that I always thought that was a typing error so it was weird to see it in handwriting! Yeah, she's a great kid.

The schools here don't seem to prioritize English. . .my nephew's first-grade teacher once sent a short note home to parents with SEVEN spelling/grammar/punctuation errors. My SIL "graded" it with a red pen and stuck it on the fridge .

My daughter took a highschool English class once where they studied the Gothic Novel. She proudly showed me that she had gotten an "A" for her last essay. The problem was that it was full of spelling errors, grammatically incorrect, sentences not complete and punctuating mistakes galore. I asked how she could get an "A" for this with all these errors. She said the teacher did not care about that, only about the content. And this in an ENGLISH class! Lest you think this is a new phenomenon this happened in 1983.

 

[segelkatt]

This is true, but it kind of depends on the school.

I have a friend who teaches a college level basic electronics course, to students on-track to become Electrical Engineers, at one of the premier colleges in the country for EEs. One day my friend gave a puzzle to his students. (For the math-inclined who want to solve the puzzle themselves, don't click on the spoilers.)

This is a math puzzle. Take (A-X)*(B-X)*(C-X)*(D-X)*...*(Y-X)*(Z-X)=???
* means times.
Parentheses mean you do those operations (the subtractions) before you do the other operations, i.e. multiplication.
... means follow the same pattern, working your way through the entire alphabet.
You have all the information needed to come up with the correct numerical answer, regardless of what values are assigned to A through Z.

Not one of the students (all enrolled in a track that's supposed to eventually turn them into Electrical Engineers, and all of whom managed to qualify to become students at this college) was able to solve the problem. In all fairness, I'm good at math but I still needed one hint. Here it is:

Spoiler: First hint:

How many terms are in this equation? (Each subtraction counts as a term.)

Not one of the students could answer the question, so he gave them a much broader hint:

Spoiler: Second hint:

Well, how many letters are in the alphabet?

Not one of the students could answer the question immediately. Some (not all) got it by counting on their fingers, which truly does say something appalling about the state of education in this country.

For those of you who are still working on the problem and getting nowhere, here is the third hint:

Spoiler: Third hint:

Start at Z and work backwards.

And if you've spent as much time on the puzzle as you like and just want to know the solution, here it is:

Spoiler: The solution:

Okay, Z-X=something or other; we don't have enough information to say what. The same applies to Y-X. But then we get to X-X, and we know what X-X is. X-X=0, and zero times anything equals zero. So the answer to the puzzle is Zero.

Margret

I am so bad at this kind of stuff that even with all the hints I don't get it, I just don't understand it. No wonder I could not pass a statistics course in college and had to change my major in my senior year to something (although related) that did not require statistics to graduate, it took me an additional year to take the courses I needed for the new major.

 

[tallyollyopia]

I haven't found a similar open position since last month I declined the interview for that because I found out that the salary was less than half of what I'm currently get paid. I'm still looking but there isn't anything out there other than very entry level positions or positions that want tons of advanced lab skills.

I don't care for cliques or drama or playing office politics games. I just want to do my work and be appreciated and listened to and be recognized when applicable. Is that too much to ask for? Everyone on the team is female so far. Our contract person doesn't start until August and it's a guy who I can't see getting involved in the clique-iness between the supervisor, her BFF, and my other co-worker. Our manager is only temporary until the new associate director gets settled into his role and then we report to hm.

We have a team meeting on Tuesday. The manager will not be there so it will just be me, the supervisor, my co-worker and possibly the new co-worker / supervisor's BFF. I have quite a few things to discuss but who knows if anyone will listen to them I have an update to something the manager wanted me to look into, a suggestion to put a rack shelf in one of the rooms to store supplies and either move or get rid of most of the empty buckets that are just piling up in that space currently, I have a new template for sign off sheets I want to run by everyone for their opinion, I reached out a company to see if they have replacement parts for an ancient piece of equipment we have (the ones we had likely got thrown out during a lab clean out) and need to know if we should go ahead and get the parts so we can use the equipment properly. I think there's a few more items.

LTS3 The only thing I would add to this, would be to: Document everything in writing. Have a Journal. Write things down. Dates, who said what, etc.

I did that once for an evaluation. I always got bad evaluations, for one reason or another. One particular year, I was ready for it. I was tired of being the perennial "Scapegoat".

I had documented all the times I went above and beyond. All the times, my suggestions were rebuked.
I had a 2 page, very unemotional reply to the review,s eating facts and positive comments from others. It dragged on for weeks. My immediate supervisor was flabbergasted that I would have the gall to fight back. She showed her true colors at that point.

I won the small battle but lost the war.. but I felt so good about fighting back.
Unfortunately, the people who were alerted to this pettiness, ended up leaving and I was forced to work with the petty clique, who incorporated new members. Yes, it was a very dysfunctional, toxic work environment.

PS.. I think a lot of health care workers are exposed to dysfunctional, toxic environments.

Ugh.....sick. My husband gave me his cold. I called out today. He's mad I did so since he's not calling out. Yeah, I lost 8 hours of income, but he has a car that gets him to work in five minutes. My car is broken, so I'd be walking to and from bus stops to get to work, total of 3/4 of a mile, standing in the heat for the bus, walking 3 miles home in the heat, and since tomorrow the bus doesn't run, I'll be walking both ways tomorrow. I think resting a day to prepare for tomorrow is a good idea.

Edit: I take that back. I'll be walking to work tomorrow, but I'll have to spring for Uber to get home since I'm closing. Still, that's a lot of walking when sick.

Hope you feel better soon.

Margret please do. It was just...stream of consciousness stuff. That's how my mind works when not in "conversation" mode. Kinda like this:

Hot summer days
No joy out my front door
Only breathless, killing
Heat
So I,
Survival in mind,
Retreat to my office lair,
Cool and dim
Except the chair, and
My tail hurts.

I sent a graduation present to a young friend. She wrote a very nice thank you note in which she assured me that she "defiantly" appreciated the gift. It was a handwritten note. . .I didn't even know that was an actual misspelling; I always thought it was from typing too fast, a typo of a different misspelling ("definately"). She was an Honor Student . I know the schools here aren't too great but yikes.

I keep telling people, what children grow up speaking in this country isn't "English", but "American."

Don't be too hard on her. #1, you got a thank you note. #2, it was hand-written, not a copy-paste of what she sent to everyone else. #3, there is a type of memory called word recall, it's the brain providing you the right word to use, and sometimes the brain glitches and provides a similarly sounding/looking word. If she didn't re-read the letter carefully, she wouldn't have caught it as word recall glitches are never caught by the person experiencing them at the time it happens (after all, your brain is saying you did use the right word).

I've done that.

I have all the recent emails saved. I'll print them out, write my comments on the side, and put them in a safe place.

I opted not to go to Mom's house today. I can't deal with family drama on top of work drama I had a leisurely day doing not much of anything. I went to the supermarket after lunch for groceries. I decided on a store rotisserie chicken for dinner. I bought a few other things as well. Leroy went bonkers looking for the chicken when I got home. I stuck it in the oven where he couldn't get to it.

After dinner I headed to the gym next door to do some PT excercises without two cats walking over me and rack up more steps on the treadmill for the walk challenge. My arms are sore from the resistance band. My back isn't too bad but we'll see if I can get out of bed to go to work tomorrow.

Make copies. It's amazing how many things get "lost."

I don't intend to be HARD on her, the main thing is that I always thought that was a typing error so it was weird to see it in handwriting! Yeah, she's a great kid.

The schools here don't seem to prioritize English. . .my nephew's first-grade teacher once sent a short note home to parents with SEVEN spelling/grammar/punctuation errors. My SIL "graded" it with a red pen and stuck it on the fridge .

The latest Nature Box included a $30 gift card to some online site called Hello Fresh. Hey, $30 is $30, so I checked it out. Whoah!!!! The prices are crazy high!

I can see the pricing fits the product as they mail every ingredient to you so fast that the meat doesn't go bad and the packaging is basically a cooler. So super-fast shipping costs plus lots of packaging justifies the cost. But those are yuppie prices aimed at someone like a lawyer married to a doctor and neither has time to cook.

Makes sense. They need to eat too; and can frequently afford to pay more than average person.

This is true, but it kind of depends on the school.

I have a friend who teaches a college level basic electronics course, to students on-track to become Electrical Engineers, at one of the premier colleges in the country for EEs. One day my friend gave a puzzle to his students. (For the math-inclined who want to solve the puzzle themselves, don't click on the spoilers.)

This is a math puzzle. Take (A-X)*(B-X)*(C-X)*(D-X)*...*(Y-X)*(Z-X)=???
* means times.
Parentheses mean you do those operations (the subtractions) before you do the other operations, i.e. multiplication.
... means follow the same pattern, working your way through the entire alphabet.
You have all the information needed to come up with the correct numerical answer, regardless of what values are assigned to A through Z.

Not one of the students (all enrolled in a track that's supposed to eventually turn them into Electrical Engineers, and all of whom managed to qualify to become students at this college) was able to solve the problem. In all fairness, I'm good at math but I still needed one hint. Here it is:

Spoiler: First hint:

How many terms are in this equation? (Each subtraction counts as a term.)

Not one of the students could answer the question, so he gave them a much broader hint:

Spoiler: Second hint:

Well, how many letters are in the alphabet?

Not one of the students could answer the question immediately. Some (not all) got it by counting on their fingers, which truly does say something appalling about the state of education in this country.

For those of you who are still working on the problem and getting nowhere, here is the third hint:

Spoiler: Third hint:

Start at Z and work backwards.

And if you've spent as much time on the puzzle as you like and just want to know the solution, here it is:

Spoiler: The solution:

Okay, Z-X=something or other; we don't have enough information to say what. The same applies to Y-X. But then we get to X-X, and we know what X-X is. X-X=0, and zero times anything equals zero. So the answer to the puzzle is Zero.

Margret

Speaking of typing errors--is there one in this equation? I went over it three times and couldn't find X-X. Maybe it's not their fault they couldn't get it.

Stuck it on the fridge? I'd have personally taken it back (since written words can be taken wrong) and made a joke about being a smart a**.

Yeah, it could have been bad teaching, but honor students usually push themselves beyond the available teachers. I actually have a word recall problem (which is why I know so much about it) and I'm forever getting weird looks at work when I say the wrong word, get corrected, and I respond with "But that's what I said....or rather what I meant." My family is so used to me that they either ignore the wrong word because they know what I meant, or substitute the right word matter-of-factually. The only time I'm aware of it is when the word recall glitches so bad that I end up doing a guessing game "It's starts with __ and _____ is a similar word" or when I'm corrected.

I have that problem.

Well I loved that math equation! I kept looking to see what the numbers are to plug into for A, B etc...and didn't catch the X-X=0 until I read the spoiler-but I was saying to myself-how do we know what the answer is without a number?! Good question! I do remember how many letters in the alphabet but I had to think a bit--I wasn't sure if it was 24 or 26-I knew it was an even number and in the middle of 20s just not which one.

Well the parts for the dryer actually showed up but there's one part missing that they didnt' have available to buy-it's a fuse and I bought that on Walmarts site=there's one more which is a thermistor-I have to buy that from another site-I wrote down the part number and left it home...but the fuse should be ready for me to pick up tomorrow. We did a very small load of wash-I hung my stuff in the sunshine and he still went to the matt.

I hit paydirt with books this weekend..there's a tiny town library next town over and they had a stuff a bag sale so bought a ton of books to resell and new ones to read. I found Alice Sebold Lucky and The Lovely Bones. I started Lucky last night-very good! I also got 3 new Danielle steel books but they are hard cover but for the stuff a bag sale I will put up with it..plus I just love her newer books-she throws in a bit of suspense with character relationships-and a twist..my favorite from her is Honey Thy Self- just a really good story.

Well I have to price my books this week and get them in the shop-my summer customers will be happy to see some new titles..and update my facebook page Foxxy's Book Closet and let them know that they will have 40% off prices. I also got a six pack of flowers and they gave away free veg plants because they were over watered-but the ones I got were still salvageable. I have to dig up some weeds to make room for them. Some cherry tomatoes and an acorn squash plant and lobelia and some other pretty flower. Still have some tidal wave petunias to get in the ground-I got to stop being so lazy and get going! Half summer is already gone it seems!

Good news on the books! Is my computer glitching? I didn't have X-X on my screen.

Back is a little sore but not too bad. Good thing I have help today at work Technically we're done but my helper wants to do more work so I have to stick around for a bit longer just in case. The work can wait for later in the week The database was acting up earlier. If it's working in a bit, I'll get some work done while my helper finishes up what she wants to do.

In the world of work emails, more since the last time I checked on Friday. Enough said

My daughter took a highschool English class once where they studied the Gothic Novel. She proudly showed me that she had gotten an "A" for her last essay. The problem was that it was full of spelling errors, grammatically incorrect, sentences not complete and punctuating mistakes galore. I asked how she could get an "A" for this with all these errors. She said the teacher did not care about that, only about the content. And this in an ENGLISH class! Lest you think this is a new phenomenon this happened in 1983.

He was probably happy to have content. I remember back in high school English we were asked to write a three page essay on football. Since he didn't say anything about what he wanted us to cover about football in the essay, I wrote about superstitions on the field. Everyone else in my class wrote about the statistics, rules, and general history of the sport.

I am so bad at this kind of stuff that even with all the hints I don't get it, I just don't understand it. No wonder I could not pass a statistics course in college and had to change my major in my senior year to something (although related) that did not require statistics to graduate, it took me an additional year to take the courses I needed for the new major.

I would think the five-number summary would be enough to give anyone trouble.

 

[Margret]

Speaking of typing errors--is there one in this equation? I went over it three times and couldn't find X-X. Maybe it's not their fault they couldn't get it.

No, (X-X) is not written out in the equation. Neither is (L-X). Both of those are part of the "..." that tells you to repeat the pattern through the entire alphabet. This is deliberate; if the equation were written:

(A-X)*(B-X)*(C-X)*...*(X-X)*(Y-X)*(Z-X)=???

it wouldn't really be a puzzle, at least not for any kind of techno/math geek, which these students presumably were. The challenge of the puzzle is to see beyond what is written down to what is actually there, and to see the one term that's just a little different from the others and answers the question. And that "..." is ubiquitous in mathematical equations; it's the only way there is to write some of them. It is essential that students who are taking any kind of higher math courses (like E.E. students) understand it. My friend didn't give his students this puzzle as some sort of test; he was trying to teach them, and he was appalled when his teaching tool turned into an impromptu test of their fitness to be in his course. However, he clearly needed the information. You can't teach people by teaching over their heads, which is what he would have done had he remained ignorant of their true level.

It's not really important to the discussion that the students didn't figure out the puzzle. The important thing is that they didn't understand the clues, which were designed to lead them to (X-X). They didn't know how many letters are in the alphabet, and many of them couldn't even count how many letters are in the alphabet, presumably because they never learned the alphabet (or else they couldn't come up with the radical idea of counting, which is worse). Not being able to solve (or enjoy) the puzzle is worrisome, given their choice of major. Not knowing the alphabet, however, speaks to a general failure of the education system, which is what we were talking about.

Margret

 

[Mother Dragon]

Many schools are now dropping cursive writing. The kids only learn to print. I find that sad. Many other classes we once had are gone, too, to make way for new skills. Many children and adults can't think without a computer or even make change without a cash register or calculator. They know only the basics of using those. Try adding the extra penny to the amount you give one so you get a larger coin back. Do it after they've put the amount in and they will not be able to give you the correct change.

My husband often pays with $2 bills. A lot of the cashiers don't know if they are even legal tender. Some have refused to accept them. We've had to call for a manager several times, and once even that person was unsure.

As for incorrect words, the spell checker often puts one over on me that I don't catch. It makes for some interesting sentences. I know the correct word; the computer doesn't.

People in New Mexico sometimes have to explain they're not from a foreign country. Knowledge of geography is now nonexistent.

Sorry. This is a tall and large soapbox for me.